Quote: Scientists have simulated the sounds set to be made by sub-atomic particles such as the Higgs boson when they are produced at the Large Hadron Collider.

Their aim is to develop a means for physicists at Cern to "listen to the data" and pick out the Higgs particle if and when they finally detect it.

Dr Lily Asquith modelled data from the giant Atlas experiment at the LHC.

She worked with sound engineers to convert data expected from collisions at the LHC into sounds.

"If the energy is close to you, you will hear a low pitch and if it's further away you hear a higher pitch," the particle physicist told BBC News.

"If it's lots of energy it will be louder and if it's just a bit of energy it will be quieter."

The £6bn LHC machine on the Swiss-French border is designed to shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

It is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel, where thousands of magnets steer beams of proton particles around the vast "ring".

At allotted points around the tunnel, the beams cross paths, smashing together near four massive "experiments" that monitor these collisions for interesting events.

Scientists are hoping that new sub-atomic particles will emerge, revealing insights into the nature of the cosmos.

Atlas is one of the experiments at the LHC. An instrument inside Atlas called the calorimeter is used for measuring energy and is made up of seven concentric layers.

Each layer is represented by a note and their pitch is different depending on the amount of energy that is deposited in that layer.

The process of converting scientific data into sounds is called sonification.

Dr Asquith and her team have so far generated a number of simulations based on predictions of what might happen during collisions inside the LHC.

The team is only now feeding in real results from real experiments.

"When you are hearing what the sonifications do you really are hearing the data. It's true to the data, and it's telling you something about the data that you couldn't know in any other way," said Archer Endrich, a software engineer working on the project.

The aim is to give physicists at the LHC another way to analyse their data. The sonification team believes that ears are better suited than eyes to pick out the subtle changes that might indicate the detection of a new particle.

But Richard Dobson - a composer involved with the project - says he is struck at how musical the products of the collisions sound.

"We can hear clear structures in the sound, almost as if they had been composed. They seem to tell a little story all to themselves. They're so dynamic and shifting all the time, it does sound like a lot of the music that you hear in contemporary composition," he explained.

Although the project's aim is to provide particle physicists with a new analysis tool, Archer Endrich believes that it may also enable us to eavesdrop on the harmonious background sound of the Universe.

He said he hoped the particle collisions at Cern would "reveal something new and something important about the nature of the Universe".

And Mr Endrich says that those who have been involved in the project have felt something akin to a religious experience while listening to the sounds.

"You feel closer to the mystery of Nature which I think a lot of scientists do when they get deep into these matters," he said.

"Its so intriguing and there's so much mystery and so much to learn. The deeper you go, the more of a pattern you find and it's fascinating and it's uplifting."

i wish they wouldnt use the term god particle. it is so limiting and wrong. i wish they came up with something more scientifically apt and less cosmologically daft.

Wed Jun 23, 2010 1:07 pm

Hellen Earthcould be a girl. could be a guy.

Joined: 09 Jan 2003
Posts: 1283
Location: Fitchburg, MA

Ka Ra Ya Sa Ta are the sounds. Guarantee it.

Wed Jun 23, 2010 1:11 pm

mancabbage

Joined: 29 Jun 2005
Posts: 9273
Location: london

zeus ?

Wed Jun 23, 2010 5:18 pm

R. Kamidees

Joined: 15 Sep 2003
Posts: 4834
Location: where the wild things are

Quantum/particle physics has fascinated me for years. Just read this article recently:

Quote:
The Higgs Boson May Have 'Five Faces'

By Jennifer Ouellette | Mon Jun 21, 2010 06:29 AM ET

Fermi-web_1657937a

Fermilab's Tevatron accelerator has been making some serious waves the last few months.

Back in May, I wrote about the latest results from the D-Zero collaboration, co-discovers of the top quark in the 1990s. The D-Zero scientists analyzed data from a bunch of proton-anti-proton collisions and found a 1 percent asymmetry in the number of muons produced compared to anti-muons.

That hinted at "a new particle not predicted by the Standard Model" -- colorfully dubbed "the toe of god" by Fermilab scientist Joe Lykken.

And now the team is back with even more intriguing results to announce from their subsequent analysis, published on arVix. See, the Standard Model doesn't fully explain why this asymmetry between matter and antimatter should exist.

Yet, as Fermilab scientist Adam Martin pointed out to BBC News, "What's difficult is to have those large effects without damaging anything else we've already measured. The Standard Model fits just about every test we've thrown at it. To fit in a new effect in one particular place is not easy."

SLIDE SHOW: Top 5 Misconceptions About the Large Hadron Collider.
LHC
WATCH VIDEO: Discovery News investigates how and why the Large Hadron Collider is smashing protons together at record energies.

Nonetheless, theoretical physicists are pondering possible alternate explanations that would keep much of the Standard Model's framework intact while still offering a potential explanation of this latest experimental evidence.

And they've come up with a doozy: maybe there isn't just one Higgs boson (the as-yet-undiscovered subatomic particle believed to impart mass); maybe, instead, there are five different versions, with similar masses but different electric charges.

Yes, it's not enough that the Standard Model already has so many types of subatomic particles that it's impossible to keep them all straight without a handy cheat sheet.

Nevermind that the theory of supersymmetry would add countless more particles to the mix. Now we have to contend with five -- count 'em, five! -- Higgs bosons: three with a neutral charge and one each with a negative and positive charge, known as the "two-Higgs doublet model." Apparently this would account for the latest D-Zero results.

Along with many physicists, I hate the term "god particle" to describe the Higgs. Fermilab's Leon Lederman coined the term over a decade ago, and it's been misleading innocent civilians ever since into thinking physicists are trying to prove or disprove the existence of god or something.

But it did give the blog 80 Beats the best line yet about these new results: "If the Higgs boson is the God Particle, then some particle physicists just turned polytheistic."

Or.. if they were really feeling bratty (and wore Kevlar)... the Mohammad Particle.

God "stuff" is trite.

Wed Jun 23, 2010 7:33 pm

Hellen Earthcould be a girl. could be a guy.

Joined: 09 Jan 2003
Posts: 1283
Location: Fitchburg, MA

being hung up on the word god is almost as bad as worshiping a God.

Wed Jun 23, 2010 7:36 pm

T-Wrexp00ny tang

Joined: 30 Jun 2002
Posts: 6410
Location: Detroit, Michigan

Hellen Earth wrote: being hung up on the word god is almost as bad as worshiping a God.

When was the last time an atheist started a war?

Wed Jun 23, 2010 7:42 pm

Mr Jenkins

Joined: 13 Dec 2007
Posts: 611
Location: Aotearoa

Korea?

Wed Jun 23, 2010 7:44 pm

neveragainlikesheep

Joined: 22 May 2008
Posts: 2536
Location: TKO from Tokyo

/facepalm at this thread.

Wed Jun 23, 2010 7:54 pm

marshall84

Joined: 15 Jul 2002
Posts: 2154
Location: KS

Only C.R.A.Z.Y.s refer to it as the "God particle." Everything will be okay.

Wed Jun 23, 2010 7:55 pm

Lonely Shinobi

Joined: 27 Oct 2007
Posts: 349
Location: adelaide, AUS

the mathematics of this is something that has always amazed me

it is possible to take a waveform, say a song, run a process called a fourier transform, and from that determine what the various elements that make up that song are, and seperate them out, determining their nature and location

mind blowing

its how MRI scanners work

Wed Jun 23, 2010 8:16 pm

mancabbage

Joined: 29 Jun 2005
Posts: 9273
Location: london

T-Wrex wrote:

Hellen Earth wrote: being hung up on the word god is almost as bad as worshiping a God.

When was the last time an atheist started a war?

you don't want to be around me when i fart, seriously.. weapons inspectors turn up

Wed Jun 23, 2010 8:57 pm

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